


Easy Lessons

by BetterBeMeta



Series: By Sparing Sazabi [3]
Category: SD Gundam, SD Gundam Force
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, Expanded Universe Fic, Family Drama, Gen, OCs from Craters, Trolling, benign unsettling child, evil grandmother, mundane problems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-27
Updated: 2016-11-27
Packaged: 2018-09-02 14:46:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 15,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8671567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BetterBeMeta/pseuds/BetterBeMeta
Summary: At age 8, Nana visits her grandmother Pam for a month in the summer. Unfortunately, Pam is terrible and Nana is by now a product of her environment: raised around the Gundam Force and best friends with the reformed Commander Sazabi... and more than 'at home' with his Axian contingent on Neotopia. A relationship that Pam sees as unwholesome at best, and unnatural at worst.





	1. Curriculum

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LadyShockbox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyShockbox/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Craters](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8006419) by [LadyShockbox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyShockbox/pseuds/LadyShockbox). 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is a sort of 'midquel' after the events of _The Fate of Commander Sazabi_ , after Shockbox's story _Craters_ , but before the events of a future long story of Nana's adventures. She's eight years old here, and by now Neotopia has sustained eight years of peace in the multiverse after Zeong's destruction. Her brother Shute has gone on and is still going on many adventures with the Gundam Force in alternate dimensions.
> 
> In brief, this takes place in an AU where Commander Sazabi was spared, and ended up 'reforming' to join the Gundam Force himself. After Zeong's defeat, he is the last member of the Dark Axis left and many Axian robots that submitted to him now live in Neotopia. Others, like Zapper, Grappler, and Dom avoid him and live in Ark. By now, Sazabi has picked new Doga Commandos, is the Supreme Leader of all Post-Axian robots, and retains his old rank of Commander in the Gundam Force: presiding over the Interdimensional Fleet reporting and Chief Haro directly. Though Captain Gundam does outrank him.
> 
> This is an uncertain future for some Neotopians, despite the 'happy ending' and peaceful conclusion. The former Dark Axis still inflicted wounds on their world, and many people did not attain the closure that killing Commander Sazabi would have given them. The events of _The Fate of Commander Sazabi_ and _Craters_ did not help.
> 
> Nana's grandmother Pam is one of these people.

“ _She did WHAT?!”_

Markus Ray held the phone at arm’s length for ten seconds. Then he crept it back up to his ear pleadingly. “It’s no big deal, mom. Nana just turned eight. She just lost her temper at school.”

“ _She’s in third grade, Markus!_ ”

Mark winced. “Mom, it’s okay. I got into all kinds of trouble when I was her age, right?”

_“You didn’t bully other children!”_

“Mom, I don’t really think—”

“ _Mark, you can’t defend this kind of behavior! It would be one thing if she just pushed another girl off the swingset! This is different.”_

“She knows what she did was wrong. She’s old enough to understand that,” said Mark. “She’s never done anything like this before. I don’t think she’ll do it again.”

“ _How do you know?”_

“I don’t. I know. But I’ve talked to all her teachers. Please believe me when I say they were all very surprised.”

_“Markus, I know your little girl is perfect. My little boy is perfect too. I just am… I’m worried about her. She knows she’s visiting grandma this summer, doesn’t she?”_

_“_ I told her. She was… pretty excited.”

_“Well, I’ll be happy to take her off your hands, sweetie. You don’t have to fret until August.”_

“I don’t know, mom. I thought you were going on that cruise on the 20th?”

_“I already rescheduled to September. It’s no trouble at all.”_

“I’ll talk to Keiko about it,” Mark said experimentally. “I’ll call you when I know.”

“ _I’m sure my little boy will persuade her. I haven’t seen Shute in ages, so it will be nice to have Nana around. Get her away from all that excitement at home.”_

The Ray household was not exactly _boring_ , but Mark wouldn’t call it _exciting_. That was part of the curiosity of it. It ought to have been. With Captain Gundam coming and going, guests from other dimensions, and the occasional presence of

Commander Sazabi,

It ought to have been in turmoil. But he was sitting down, getting ready for a nice afternoon with his wife, while his son was off with his friends and his daughter was playing outside with her toys.

“ _Well, I’m sorry to have made such a fuss. But you know me, Markus. Love you and miss you sweetie.”_

“Talk to you later, mom.”

Mark slumped down on the patio bench. His long arms and legs splayed out like a chicken. He hung up the phone. Then placed it on the patio table. Then flipped it upside-down.

“Something the matter?”

Well. At least his wife was here. Keiko sat with a cup of tea, and then slid another mug his way. She’d probably heard the commotion. Mark took a short sip. She knew it was bad. She’d added honey.

“Oh, you know, the usual,” he said. “My mother just thinking the sky’s falling down again, our marriage is falling apart, and my children need rescuing.”

“Well, no on all three,” said Keiko. “Sky safely where it’s supposed to be, husband where _he’s_ supposed to be... And I can’t count the amount of people standing around to rescue our kids.”

“I mean, if you don’t get there first,” Mark said.

Keiko laughed softly. He knew she worried too.

“Mom wants to see Nana for a _month_. I think she’s… I don’t know. You know how she is. Has to be done herself to be right.”

Keiko drank her tea. “M-hm.”

“Well, what do you think?”

“I think she should go.”

“What, really?”

Keiko sighed. “On one hand, I’d rather Nana not. But on the other, I think that if we wait any longer, your mother will get upset.”

“True, yeah,” Mark said. “You think she can handle it?”

“Learning experience?”

“You’re a hard teacher, honey.”

Keiko leaned over and planted a kiss on her husband’s cheek. It was one of those teasing ones. “I hope she takes Pam to school.”

 

The general that hearkens to my counsel and acts upon it, will conquer: let such a one be retained in command! The general that hearkens not to my counsel nor acts upon it, will suffer defeat: let such a one be dismissed!  
While heading the profit of my counsel, avail yourself also of any helpful circumstances over and beyond the ordinary rules.  
According as circumstances are favorable, one should modify one's plans.  
All warfare is based on deception.  
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War


	2. Lesson One

Pamela Ray straightened her cushions out for the third time that summer morning and sat down with her magazine and coffee. George was out for the day. And the house was immaculate. But the service never left the living room just right. She waited on the blue velour couch for the sound of a doorbell around eleven-o-clock.

She turned the page. It wasn’t a very good issue of _New Housekeeper_. Rock gardens were hideous, and couldn’t go out of style fast enough.

It was almost too bad that Keiko arrived on time. That put one conversation starter out of the picture, the ‘oh-how-was-traffic’ approach. Pamela put down her coffee and answered the door with a bright smile.

“Oh, lovely to see you, Keiko. Have you been well?”

Keiko was taller than her, lean, and well-preserved for bearing a child and raising two. Her long black hair was tied in a braid that day. Obviously, she was off work for the season. “I’ve been fantastic,” she said. And polite words aside, there was a certain rosiness to her skin. “Thanks so much for taking Nana for a few weeks. Mark and I really appreciate it.”

“I’m happy to help,” Pam said. “Do you two have plans?”

“Oh yes,” said Keiko.

Pam didn’t push it. “Where’s Nana?”

“Oh, she’s coming up from the car. She wanted to carry her suitcase herself,” Keiko said. “You know that age. Wants to be a big kid. Best to just let her learn what it’s like.”

“I remember,” Pam said. “This is her first time away from home for so long, isn’t it?”

“Yes. That’s why she’s trying to be grown-up about it,” said Keiko.

“Mom! I’m coming, I made it!”

Keiko stepped aside to let her daughter clamber up the brick stairs. She hefted a suitcase in both hands, determined to drag it up one step at a time. She smiled proudly when she made it to the top. She looked so much like her father.

“Hi, Nana,” Pam said. It hurt her back a little to bend down, but she’d do it for her granddaughter. Nana hugged strongly.

“Hi, Grandma!”

Maybe that awful boy from her school had made it all up. Keiko would believe anything about her daughter. It was hard to imagine that Nana would pick up a whole ants’ nest and attack another child with it.

“How has my favorite granddaughter been?” Pam asked. She kissed Nana’s pale cheek. The girl scrunched her nose.

“I’m good,” said Nana. “Summer vacation just started!”

Pam stood with a slight pause, ruffled her granddaughter’s blond hair. “Well, I’ll take it from here. We’re going to have a good time together.”

“Be good,” Keiko said. She walked backwards down the stairs, waving half the way down.

“I will!” Nana promised. “Tell Sazabi that I’ll miss him too!”

Sazabi. She said that name with such innocence. It came out of her mouth so easily, so neatly. Pam pushed a lock of hair behind the girl’s ear. Soon Keiko was gone and they both were standing at the stairs looking out at the empty yard.

“Grandma? Where can I put this?” Nana asked.

“I’ll show you,” Pam said. “Go right into the hall and I’ll show you where you’ll sleep.”

She closed her door and locked it, and bolted it.

 

Peace proposals unaccompanied by a sworn covenant indicate a plot.  
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War


	3. Lesson Two

Nanako was a quiet child until she opened her mouth. Pam almost forgot that she was there. She’d been sent up to settle in and she’d spent a good hour taking everything out of her suitcase and arranging it in the guest room. She put all her socks and underwear neatly in a drawer, hung up all her clothes in the closet. She put her toothbrush in the bathroom and her toys in a neat pile in the corner. Then she turned on the console and flipped through the subscribed TV channels. Pam heard her upstairs. She wasn’t watching any of them. She was just looking through all fifty. She didn’t come down until after noon.

She brought a full-size box of 150 crayons, a pad of paper, and a coloring book.

“Grandma? Can I have peanut butter and jelly, please?” Nana asked. It was polite, except for that it was a shade too loud for indoors. She spread the paper out on the kitchen counter and hopped up on the stool.

“Of course, sweetie,” said Pam gently. She set aside her magazine crossword (04 down: bouquet for Traugott?) and went over to the fridge across the room. She made a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich.

“Strawberry or grape, Nana?”

“Strawberry, please,” said Nana. She was softer that time.

“Milk or juice?”

“Milk, please,” said Nana. She was scribbling on the paper behind Pam. It sounded a little passionate.

Pam poured a short glass of milk. “Do you like your sandwich in rectangles or triangles?”

“Triangles,” said Nana automatically.

But when Pam turned around and put the plate in front of her granddaughter, she just stared at it for a second. She didn’t put her crayon down right away.

“Why’d you cut the crusts off?” Nana asked. It wasn’t hurt or accusatory. But she looked up with those wide blue eyes expectantly.

“Your brother liked them that way when he was your age. You don’t like that?”

Nana shook her head. “It’s okay. I don’t mind the crusts,” she said. Then after a second. “Um, actually… can I have the crusts back?”

By the time Pam had retrieved the crusts from the cutting board across the room, Nana had already inhaled one half of her sandwich. She was back to drawing. She had a light blue crayon, a red crayon, a pink crayon, and a black crayon for the lines. She was coloring in an angular person who was very red.

“Is that _Sazabi_?” Pam asked her.

“Huh? Nope,” said Nana. She didn’t look up from her crayons. “That’s Dyna Robo! He’s super cool and strong. He’s the hero.”

Pam felt her forehead contort as she raised her eyebrow. Oh, there was just no helping some wrinkles. “Of a movie?”

“TV,” Nana said. She pointed to one of the other figures on the page, the one in light blue. “That’s his ultimate nemesis, Malamech! He's the _villain._  He’s also pretty cool, but scary. He just showed up for real last month. I think the next episodes are when they’re gonna fight.”

“What do they fight over?”

Nana finished coloring the red robot on her page. She moved on to a pink robot. “Stuff? Dyna Robo is a fighter in an alien world that actually is important to his mysterious past, and Malamech is always there waiting for him, sending his bad guys to stop him. I’m excited for the season finale.”

“Who’s the pink… robot?”

“Oh, ha! Hee hee.” Nana blushed before she explained. “She’s, um… That’s Stardust. She’s not real though, I just made her up. She’s Malamech’s super secret weapon! But she also wants to be friends with Dyna Robo, even though they fight.”

Pam looked at the off-shape pink robot on the page and recognized two parts sticking out of its back that reminded her of wobbling pigtails.

“Don’t you draw any people?” she asked warily.

“Huh?”

“I mean, humans. That you know in real life,” Pam clarified.

Nana tapped the end of her crayon to her cheek, thinking. “Yeah, sometimes,” she said. “But humans are hard to draw.

Out of the box of 150, Pam selected a peach crayon. She offered it to her granddaughter. “Why don’t you try?”

Nana took it, said “okay,” and began to color in Stardust’s laser beams.

 

Supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.  
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War


	4. Lesson Three

Nana did go on to draw some humans: some pictures of her family, as through an 8-year-old’s eyes. First her mother, then her father. Even though it was nice to see the girl draw Markus in such a flattering way, it was clear she was still at that age where she thought parents were super heroes.

Next she drew her brother. She drew him better than both her parents combined. But that was where it stopped. After that came Captain Gundam, because _obviously_ there was no drawing Shute without that robot.

Then she drew Sazabi. She drew him huge, the ‘right size’ she said. It was by far the most accurate drawing, including his ghastly ragged scowl. Somehow she made it look _happy_.

Even her coloring book didn’t have any people in it. It was just pages of spirographs and mandalas. Nana spent most of the afternoon sitting in a beam of sunlight in the living room, playing on her handheld. Some violent game, most likely. She didn’t speak again until dinner.

The next morning, after Nana got up early to watch cartoons on the console, Pam had a little talk with her.

“Nana, couldn’t you watch your shows at home?” she asked over pancake breakfast.

Nana dug into her stack of four pancakes. At least her mother had taught her not to talk with her mouth full. “Yeah. But I’m watching them here.”

“Sweetie, there’s plenty to do here,” said Pam. “I’m sure you don’t need to be glued to your handheld all day.”

“I wasn’t gonna play all day. Just until 5:30 PM,” Nana said. “That’s when Dyna Robo comes on.”

“Is it really so important?”

“Yeah.”

But Pam had already raised one boy. She wasn’t going to lose ground to an eight-year-old. “ _Really_ , really?”

Nana visibly considered. She twirled her fork in the air. “I guess it _is_ a re-run…”

“Why don’t you go play outside?” Pam suggested.

Nana asked, “Grandma, I thought you said to do things I couldn’t do at home?”

“Hm?”

“I mean, isn’t it just like… across the city? It’s not like you live in Lacroa and I could go outside and run into a dragon or something,” Nana said.

Pam just patted that little blonde head. “I’m sure you’ll find something fun,” she promised.

And Nana seemed sensible when she changed out of pajamas, put on her light-up sneakers, and soon ran out the patio door into the yard. Pam watched her climb the fence and go into the woods behind the house.

Then it got quiet.

Pam knew this kind of quiet.

It was the quiet of your son about to drop a bowling ball out a window, or riding an air mattress down the stairs. It was that impending quiet of something about to _happen_. Pam’s hearing trained to its limit. She knocked on her husband’s study.

“George. George, come out here.”

He emerged from his wood-paneled, deep red-carpeted man cave and looked up from the news on his tablet. He hadn’t even shaved yet. “Dear, what is it?”

“It’s Nana,” Pam said. “I don’t know what.”

George turned around. Pam caught his shoulder and nearly dragged him out into the hallway.

“Dear, it’s too early for her to cause problems.”

“Do you hear that?”

George squinted.

“No,” he said.

“It’s trouble. Trust me,” Pam said. “I sent her out to play.”

“She couldn’t have gotten so far,” George said. “There’s nothing but woods around. Do you think she’s digging up your herb garden, I—”

They were in the kitchen now. Pam was already pouring some coffee when they heard it. Faintly, as if from far away.

“Grandma! Grandma, look!”

It grew louder. Accompanied by footfalls on grass.

“Take a look at _this!_ ”

Nana didn’t hop the fence. She turned the corner around the house and ran right through the open patio door. In her hands she hefted a fifteen pound _snapping turtle_.

“Look! It’s so cute!”

Pam didn’t scream. She’d had a feeling and braced herself. George yelled, though.

 

Disciplined and calm, to await the appearance of disorder and chaos amongst the enemy: this is the art of retaining self-possession.  
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War


	5. Lesson Four

Prying conversation out of her granddaughter was like trying to pick screws out of wood. She seemed happy enough. But she kept her thoughts close. Pam had never heard Keiko suggest that the girl was shy. And her precociousness certainly ruled out the possibility. Pam knew shyness like a hawk knew the grass in a field, looking down from above. Nanako was not a mouse hiding underneath.

Pam served the girl a slice of chicken breast and steamed broccoli. Nanako looked at her plate. “Grandma, can I have a little bit more please?”

“Wait for seconds, dear,” Pam said.

George was served. He led the Grace.

“For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful. Amen.”

Nana speared a broccoli.

None of the topics that she discussed with George baited her. Not the possibility of going on a cruise. Not a new boardwalk with attractions going up by the marina. She listened patiently, eating her vegetables one after another. Did she like broccoli? She didn’t look particularly pleased or displeased to be eating it.

“Oh, we shouldn’t ignore you, Nana,” Pam said. “How is everything at school?”

“School just got out for the summer,” Nana replied.

Pam smiled. “Well, yes. But what did you think? How was your year?”

Nana tilted her head as she thought. She swallowed her mouthful and looked up.

“Hard question,” she said. “I didn’t have any problems. So it was good?”

The old ‘if I’m not dead I’m fine’ line. The girl thought of problems first, not things she enjoyed. It was just like Markus to raise a worrier. “What was good about it, sweetie?”

Nana had to think again. She stalled for time by finishing her broccoli already. “It was easy.”

“How?”

“I know how to read, so language class is easy. Math is harder. But it’s okay. Science class is fun.”

Keiko was a teacher, so Nana definitely had an advantage in school. For all that Shute did that correspondence nonsense.

George cut a piece of his chicken, chewed, and then said, “Not as fun as your friends, I bet.”

“Yeah. But I don’t have to go to school to see my friends,” Nana said.

What kind of a thing to say was that? “Homeschooled?”

“Nah.”

“What kind of friends are they?”

This excited her. She’d been slowly eating her serving of chicken, but she stopped to speak. Her voice picked up. “The cool kind of friends! Sazabi’s my friend. But there’s also Tango, and Auntie Rombra, and whenever Shute’s around Captain is too... And there’s Shatterrock, and also, um, the yellow guy, I forget his name. Not very good friend of me. Oh! And Copspin, I almost forgot. And Zero, and Bakunetsumaru sometimes show up!”

Pam lifted her wineglass.

“What about at school, dear?” George attempted.

“Oh! Um, there’s a zako there, Flip, he’s a janitor, he’s nice and—”

George bit his lip visibly. “Do you have any other friends?”

“ _Human_ friends,” Pam clarified.

Her granddaughter tilted her head again. She frowned, furrowed her brow. “That’s a weird question,” she said.

 

Walk in the path defined by rule, and accommodate yourself to the enemy until you can fight a decisive battle.   
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War


	6. Lesson Five

Beep-beep-beep.

Pam turned over in bed. The clock’s bright green display swatted her in the face. 2:31. She almost closed her eyes again. Downstairs, the microwave was on. That was strange. She listened to the faint hum. Then lifted the quilt off, tucked it neatly in for George, who for once wasn’t snoring on his half of the bed.

She opened the bedroom door and walked down, slippers and bathrobe. The hall light wasn’t on. Just the pantry light. Stark and too-bright.

From the top of the stairs, Pam could see into the kitchen past the dining area. Nanako was waiting for the microwave in her pajamas. In one hand she held her long-suffering red plush dinosaur. Her long yellow hair was askew, as if she’d gotten up from bed. On the counter beside her was the container of leftovers from dinner.

Pam pursed her lips. The girl had asked for seconds, and she’d given her an even smaller portion. She was only a little girl, no reason for her to eat like her brother did. Nanako hadn’t argued but had frowned and cleared her plate and then asked about dessert. Pam had told her that she hadn’t gone shopping.

She’d have a word with her daughter-in-law about nighttime snacks.

Beep-beep-beep.

Nanako set her dinosaur down on the kitchen counter. His black beady eyes facing right up towards the stairs. She reached up to the counter and pulled a plate out of the microwave. That was the entire drumstick from the roaster chicken. Pam swallowed her own saliva, watching as her granddaughter took it in one fist and ripped into it. She didn’t even sit down, she just stood in the middle of the ceramic tiles and stripped the meat off. Even twenty feet away and up a flight of stairs she could hear the sounds of her little teeth scraping bone. The crunching noise as she bit the cartilage and ate that too. She broke off the fibula and did not miss even a scrap.

Then she smiled, threw the bones in the trash, stood on the stool to scrub her plate, and put it in the dishrack. Then she fit the leftovers back into the refrigerator. And after washing her hands and wiping her face, she began to walk upstairs again with her stuffed animal. Pam quickly fled over the carpet to her own door and shut it before Nanako could come down the hall. She stood in the dark with only wood separating her from her granddaughter’s footfalls. The girl walked past. Turned into the guest room and shut herself in to sleep again.

Pam sat on her own bed and looked into the dark of her open closet. She shed her bathrobe and slippers and slid back into bed. Next to George, she was as cold as an icicle.

 

In raiding and plundering be like fire.  
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War


	7. Lesson Six

The end of the first week passed mostly without incident after that. Pam served her granddaughter a portion-and-a-half at supper and a cookie for dessert and there were no more night-time raids. It didn’t seem like Nana’s figure was impacted in the least, whether she sat still and played on her console or ran around in the backyard for hours. The girl seemed infinitely capable of inventing all sorts of elaborate games or tasks to do.

It was strange though to wake up on Sunday morning to find her missing. Only for a few minutes though. She already was in the basement, sitting on the dryer. She said she didn’t want her grandma to have to wash her clothes, that she ‘could take care of it’ for her. When Pam asked if her mother had taught her how, she’d shook her head.

“Sazabi told me to pull my own weight,” Nana had said. Which had to be some kind of joke, because it implied that the thing knew how to do laundry and that was ten kinds of impossible. The whites came out a little pink, but otherwise Nana hadn’t ruined any of her clothes.

After breakfast, Nanako put her dishes in the sink and asked, “Grandma? Is it OK if I call home?”

“Well, I don’t see why not,” Pam said.

Just as she picked up the phone to dial, Nanako announced, “I memorized the phone number!”

Pam chuckled. “Well, is that right? Why don’t you call, then?”

When she got her hands on the old-style phone, Nanako dialed as fast as she could press the buttons. She twirled the cord in one finger while she waited.

Then her eyes lit up. “Hi, Mom!”

Pam watched her listen to whatever Keiko said..

“Yeah, I’m fine. I miss everybody though. No, I’m not being a baby about it.”

She released the cord and let it spring back.

“I’m having a good time! Please don’t worry about me. Yeah. No, it’s still fun! I caught a big turtle!”

She giggled.

“Mom! That’s mean.”

Then she assured, “I mean it, I really am okay. I’ll talk to you soon? Bye, Mom!”

Pam asked, “Would you hand me the phone, please? I’d like to speak with your mother.”

“Oops,” Nanako said. “I hung up. Sorry.”

Pam sighed. “That’s all right, I’ll just dial again.”

-o-

Commander Sazabi, who by a convoluted series of events was not only alive, but also the Supreme Leader of all free Axians on Neotopia, pulled up his phone-sim process and called Keiko Ray, a sixth-grade public school teacher.

This is because through that same convoluted series of events, she had become his house-arrest warden following his failed invasion of Neotopia. Then eventually somewhat of a peer. Finally the entire mess had ended up with his place in her family as weirdly firm as her son or husband.

That convoluted series of events had been intense: surmounting torment and starvation, despair, touching flowers, and a few acute cases of death. But to make a long story short, however unlikely the case may seem Keiko was one of the few people who could ever get a call from the Commander and be anything but petrified about it.

_“What? Sazabi, slow down. What did you say about Nana?”_

This is what he got for choosing a calm Sunday morning for routine flight tests. Sazabi pitched into a tight climb, booster rockets roaring. Clouds smeared past like watercolors.

“Just now, she called me,” Sazabi repeated. “The brat! Did you give her my private line?”

“ _No. You should probably ask one of your Commandos. I bet one of them would know.”_

Sazabi pulled his ascent into a gentle chandelle and reversed direction. “She was incomprehensible.”

_“Upset?”_

“Ha! Who can tell? She addressed me as if I were _you_.”

Sazabi had to endure a solid thirty seconds of that woman’s laughter. He dropped into a plunging dive, corkscrewing.

_“Oh… oh, I’m sorry, Sazabi. I’m just imagining your face, at being called ‘Mom.’”_

“A disturbing pass-time,” Sazabi scolded. “Abandon it.”

_“Okay, mister. What did she do after that? Or was that all?”_

When Sazabi leveled off he was kilometers away from his goal. He covered the distance with a series of test rolls. “No. I demanded she explain herself. She would only provide generic responses. And, apparently she caught a turtle. Obviously guarding her words in the presence of the enemy.”

_“Oh, no. You’ll have to wait a minute, Sazabi. I’m putting you on hold. It’s Pam.”_

“Destroy her,” Sazabi suggested with utter relish.

 

It is the business of a general to be quiet and thus ensure secrecy; upright and just, and thus maintain order.  
He must be able to mystify his officers and men by false reports and appearances, and thus keep them in total ignorance.  
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War


	8. Lesson Seven

“Do that again,” Pam asked.

“Okay!”

Nana ran for a few strides on the freshly-cut lawn. Then she dipped into a cartwheel. Two cartwheels. Then she ended up on a handstand.

“Oops,” she giggled. “Upside-down.”

Pam nodded from where she sat in the shade with her mojito and watched the kid fix herself right-ways up with a neat roundoff. Maybe the console time and her handheld were Keiko’s Nana-containment-strategies. She’d run around like a little terror outside otherwise and needed supervision not to jump all over the fence.  Or climb the trellis wall and break her neck.

George returned from the garage with a pitted baseball, a bat, and two old leather gloves. He considered the bat. Then he thought better of it and leaned it up against the wooden patio table. “All right, Nana. Let’s see if you can catch.”

Nana took the glove. “Is that all?”

“Not so easy,” George chuckled. “You know, I used to be a big-time pitcher in college. And I still practice.”

“Once a month,” Pam added tartly from the sidelines. George shot her a look. She sipped her mojito.

“Go stand a ways away, Nana,” said George. When she reached the correct distance he added, “That’s far enough. How’s that glove? You’re not left handed, are you?”

Nana put the glove on. It was way too big for her. “I’m ambide… ambey… I can use both hands."

“Well, get ready. Here comes the pitch!”

It was a normal, gentle throw. Nana caught it easily.

“Toss it back!”

She stuck her tongue out and wound her arm up. Slap! George had her ball and his glove plumed dust.

“I see who you take after,” he said proudly. “Going high now.”

Nana’s arm shot out to catch it. She didn’t even have to step back. “You should see Captain Gundam throw. It’s funny.”

She tossed the ball up in a wide arc. George looked up, ready to move to where it flew wide. But it came down just where he was, right into his glove. “Yeah?”

“I saw it once. He and Shute were playing. He threw it spinning really super fast. The glove caught fire catching it. He said it was because of the friction.”

George laughed nervously. “Good thing your dad taught the boy how to catch,” he said, and tossed the ball back to her.

Pam finished her drink. Her magazine was waiting for her, but she hadn’t looked down in five minutes. She watched her husband and her granddaughter throw the baseball back and forth between them. The two of them were playing nicely outside together. That was good. That was normal. Wholesome.

“You should consider trying out for a sport,” George said. “You’re a natural.”

“Really?”

“Sure, kiddo. Someplace to let out that extra energy. Maybe you’d win a trophy or two, who knows?”

“How good do you have to be to get a prize in sports?”

George grinned. “Damn good. But I can show you a couple beauties I won in college when we get back inside.”

“If you got prizes, it can’t be _too_ hard,” Nana pondered.

Pam’s lips almost curled up into a smile when George huffed. He halfway wound up the next throw. Then his back gave out and his arm jerked sharply. “Oof!”

The ball left his fingers at his top major-league speed of 153kph in a way it hadn’t in over thirty years. The Ray Gun, they called it. Straight at Nana’s face. Pam was hopeless in getting up to warn her. She didn’t even register what had happened until it was all over.

Nanako had caught the ball. The sight replayed in Pam’s memory. No flinch. Her small hand flashed. Her glove closed. A shudder ran through her body from the impact: starting with her wrist, to her shoulder, finally jiggling her pigtails. She didn’t even blink.

“Wow! Good throw!” she piped, and tossed the ball back. George barely caught it, rubbing his side and cursing under his breath. Pam poured herself a drink, and another for George.

 

Speed is the essence of war: take advantage of the enemy's unreadiness, make your way by unexpected routes, and attack unguarded spots.  
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War


	9. Lesson Eight

Congenia Galleria was located in a fashionable sector of Neotopia’s city. It had an elaborate metro system and elevator access to keep its grounds pristine. Outside on wide promenades the private citizen market traded in art, crafts, curiosity goods. Colorful shades shielded casual browsers. Inside was the commercial sector. Downtown was where fashion and technology debuted. Congenia was where Neotopia went to go get them for itself.

Pam was happy to bring her granddaughter here for a trip. It had been somewhat of a chore convincing her. Apparently “just because” wasn’t enough. But suggest a practical reason with a promise of a fun outing attached and she leaped in the car to go.

Once Nana got there she postponed her mission to buy a bathing suit for the beach. She looked through every window they passed. She liked shopping after all, she just needed coaxing out the door.

And herding into the correct store. Pam heard more about Dyna Robo! past the toy shop than she’d ever cared to know about. She completely rethought anything about her granddaughter being quiet. She only needed something to talk about. Then she’d go off forever. A never-ending font of observations past every glass storefront.

Menswear mannequins. “Boring guys?”

Bridal shop. “Princess dresses!”

Robot boutique. “Cute!”

Lingerie. “Is that Ms. Renee in there? Hi!” (Who?)

Shoe shop. “Do high heels really make you taller or is it just weird?”

Consumer electronics. “That stuff looks cheap.”

Perfume shop. “Yuck, death gas cloud.”

Nana almost talked her grandmother into getting her ears pierced a few years early. Instead they entered the kids’ clothing store and Pam succeeded at shooing her granddaughter to activewear. There, she proceeded to pick every bathing suit off the rack in her size. Pam had to make her dump it all in a cart when she was determined to carry all of them herself.

It was good for a girl her age to like shopping. But she hadn’t once seen Nana try to play dress-up. Soon it became clear that she was _picky_. She fussed in the mirror like a parakeet in each suit before taking it off and flinging it back into the basket. She tried on three two-pieces before she decided they were 'weird.' That eliminated half her pile. She took her time with the rest without asking for an opinion.

Pam sat in the corner of the changing room stall and watched her. She’d never have gone shopping with her grandson this way. It wasn't polite to be in this kind of close quarters with a boy. From what she could tell, there wasn't much difference in build between the two children at the same age. Natural birth or otherwise. Shute had been a lean late bloomer and all legs, but healthy and fit. It hadn’t been a surprise when he’d shot up at fifteen. Nana didn’t look to be developing early.

Still, both her grandchildren certainly were robust for their age. Wherever the extra helping at supper went.

“Grandma? This is the one I want. Can I get it?”

It was actually a plain, sports-style one piece with a racer-back. It came in hot pink. Her granddaughter posed proudly, maybe a little melodramatically.

“All right,” Pam chuckled. “It suits you. That’s the one. Take it off and give it to me, all right?”

She did, almost getting the straps caught on her hair.

“I’ll meet you outside with the cart, all right sweetie? Get changed back into your normal clothes.”

“OK, Grandma.”

When Pam left the changing stall she took a walk down the racks, found the children's bathing section. Then she swapped the suit out for a blue one and put it in the bottom of the cart. When Nana found her again on the aisle floor she was none the wiser.

“Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get something cute for you,” Pam said playfully. Nana was happy to comply, and after an hour and a half they had cleared the sale racks of anything worthwhile. Pam sighed in relief that none of it was red.

When they got to the check-out Nana watched them ring up every item with wide, curious eyes. It was going to be a pleasure to tell Keiko that her daughter liked the nicer things in life.

Then, the store attendant pulled out a blue bathing suit.

“Hey, wait,” Nanako said immediately. “That’s not mine.”

The GM attendant paused. “That's so?”

“Please don’t mind her,” said Pam. “We’ll take it, no harm in it, right?”

“But it’s really not mine. The one I picked out was pink. Where is it?”

Pam smiled awkwardly. “Don’t make a scene, Nana.”

“Grandma, you said I could have the pink one. That’s the one I picked.”

“Blue is just as good on you, dear. It goes with your eyes.”

“But I like pink,” Nana said. She was getting louder. The GM attendant began typing on their store console.

“Don’t throw a tantrum,” Pam scolded.

That might have been the last straw. Nanako looked like she was going to cry. But she didn’t. She bit her lip and quivered. The GM at the register, who had a name plate with ‘DC’ on it, intervened.

“It’s no problem, ma’am. An associate of mine is coming up with a pink one right now,” they said soothingly. “Is that all right for you, miss?”

Nana nodded.

“I would like to speak to your manager, _sir_ ,” Pam said. “This just isn’t necessary. It’s holding up the line.”

There was no line behind them. The GM shrugged. “Of course, ma’am. They’re on their way.”

Pam tapped her foot as she now had to wait for a pimpled teenage shelver to convey the _pink_ bathing suit. The GM’s manager arrived. They were another GM, with some well-done detailing and a glossy-tinted optic screen. Her name card introduced her as “Jenny.”

Pam watched DC scan the pink bathing suit and authorize the sale to her. It went folded up into the shopping bag.

“What seems to be the issue?” the manager Jenny asked sweetly. It was a tone that expected anything but sweetness back. Pam did not enjoy having to crook her neck down, put her hands on her hips.

Pam had several things to say. First of all, why had she been held up in this manner? Second of all, this cashier had no reasons to interfere with something that was none of their business. Third of all—

“Listen up,” said Nanako suddenly, pushing past Pam’s shopping cart.

Pam blinked.

“You see this Mr. DC here?” said Nanako. The GM began to vibrate, nervous. “Well, we had a problem buying something. We had the wrong thing.”

“I’m very sorry, miss,” said the manager Jenny.

“You’ve got it wrong,” Nanako said. “It was our mistake and he fixed it right away. He listened to me even though I’m a kid. He did it without being asked to do it by anybody. He is an extra-good employee and you should give him a prize.”

The GM in the cashier seat went rail-stiff.

“Isn’t that right, Grandma?” Nana said sweetly.

Pam’s mouth flattened. She squeezed out, “Yes, sweetie. You’re right, of course.”

 

If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant.  
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War


	10. Lesson Nine

She had to have the best playing-dumb act of any child born.  There was just no way Nanako could have _not_ understood what she’d just done. The kid was _slick_. And it was in public, no less. No lecture possible. Soon they were standing on an escalator down to the metro basement. Pam looked at her shoes, evading the other shoppers. She’d have to return for a new pair. This one was getting scuffed over the toe.

Nanako held her hand and carried one of the bags herself. She was humming. She only stopped when they reached the transport level and stepped onto the platform. Then they had to navigate the foot traffic. Nana almost bumped into several other pedestrians who didn’t move out of the way. Pam had to tug her hand to avoid the crowd.

“We’ll get home soon, all right?” Pam tried to assert to her granddaughter. The outing was cancelled. That was the only way she could respond to this kind of behavior. She should have remembered what it was like with Shute. Having grandchildren wasn’t like having her own children. You could scold your own children. But to grandchildren you’d just be the villain in their storybook. Best to just rush past the situation to be sure it was over and done with and remain the good fairy.

Either way, her granddaughter either didn’t hear her, or didn’t choose to respond. She didn’t make a sound in any way until she called out cheerfully, “Hey! Over here! Hi! Are you lost?”

Pam looked up.

Across the platform, there was a lone axian robot. Not one of the little ones, the Zakos. Those were bumbling and offensive but like ants could be dismissed easily so long as they stayed out from underfoot. This was one of the elite ones, the _big_ ones, with a head like a shark. It was its own attack aircraft, though both wings were folded and pinned as close to the body as possible. The Doga was still wider than any mobile citizen had a right to be. Its sinister glowing optic scanned around until it locked forward. Directly at them. Pam seized up, felt a film of sweat rise over her foundation.

It advanced toward them. Nanako was beckoning, drawing it in and waving at it, shaking the bag in her other hand all around. Pam’s knees shook. She tugged. Nana had a grip and wouldn’t move. By God, it got close enough to spit on. If she had any left in her mouth.

“Don’t be afraid,” said Nana. “I’m friendly, see?” She was talking to the _robot_ , not to her. As if it wasn’t over twice her size, with servos that could tear her like cellophane. It did not stare them head-on, but tilted its massive face aside to look at Pam. Then down at her granddaughter. It was… trembling? Or coiled to lash out?

“I will comply,” said the Doga. It had a rough tone to it, but subdued. Confused? Could it not decide what to do with them?

“Don’t bother strangers,” Pam croaked. She tugged at her granddaughter in vain again. _Talking_ to it was out of the question.

“It’s not bothering them. I’m Nana,” said Nana loudly, with a tiny smile. “This is my grandma Pam. What’s your name?”

“EL-R01,” said the Doga. Then _sheepishly_ (?!), “Elroy, if it’s simpler, human.”

“Nice to meet you, Elroy!”

“Sweetie, we have to get on the train,” Pam said.

“Sorry, I’ll try to be fast,” her granddaughter replied. “Elroy, are you lost? Can I help you?”

It was just preposterous. There was no way such a robot could ever be 'helped' by an eight-year-old human girl. The Axians were repulsed by all organic life. They kept to themselves, and that was the best Pam could hope for. _Whatever_ they could want, it was not _help_ from any human being.

“I have never taken this form of transport before,” said the Doga. “Being underground is disorienting. Is this the correct stop for the Galleria?”

“Yep! You got it right. Go up that way and you should see all the stores. What’cha shopping for?”

“ _Nana…!”_

“Something formal,” the Doga said pitifully.

“Second floor! Robot fancy stuff store,” Nana suggested. “Good luck!”

Pam pushed her granddaughter through the open shuttle doors before the thing could say _thank-you_. If such a being ever would take a human courtesy at all.

“Bye, Elroy!”

The doors snapped shut and they were sealed in the metro car with a throng of staring bystanders. Pam sat down on one of the handicapped seats close to the exit and rubbed her pounding headache in delicate fingers. “Nana, you can’t just talk to strangers that way. You have no idea what sort of person they could be.”

“But he needed help.” Nana said with a pout. It made her mouth a tiny, worried, upside-down v.

“Who could tell?” retorted Pam, a little sharper than she’d intended. “I didn’t hear him _ask_ for directions.”

Nanako put her bag down on the ground next to the transit seat and hopped up. “You can tell by… you know…” She waved her hand in a circular motion in front of her face. “They do the thing. In like… the special help-me way.”

“Is that, is that what,” Pam swallowed the name down, “ _Sazabi_ does?”

Nanako burst out laughing in her small voice. A couple of the shuttle patrons made a point of averting their eyes and reading their phones and handhelds.

“That would be funny,” Nana giggled. “Axians ask for help from small to big, never the other way.”

Pam didn’t want to know anything more, but her morbid curiosity got the better of her. “What goes the other way?”

“Directions,” Nanako said happily.

 

The leader of armies is the arbiter of the people's fate, the one on whom it depends whether the nation shall be in peace or in peril.  
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War


	11. Lesson Ten

It was a perfect 30°c at Neotopia’s public beachfront. It would have been quieter to use the closed seashore by the marina club, maybe. But for once, avoiding gangs of screaming children wasn’t an advantage.

Nana had squirmed about the sunscreen but had listened nicely about putting it on. She was careful to get every part of her body, even behind her ears. Then all illusion of precaution burned up in the sun as soon as they set up the umbrella and the beach blanket. She stretched her rubber goggles over her face and ran at the water. Pam waited for her to sandpiper away from the surf, doubtless to realize how cold the ocean was.

Oh, no. She plowed right into the water like a runaway hot-pink jeep. Her wake cleared before she surfaced again: two sodden pigtails first. Then she was bowled over again by a gentle wave. She laughed and floated around a few feet from shore like a saltwater crocodile.

“Be careful,” Pam called at her. “Don’t get washed too far downshore.”

“I will!” she yelled from the water’s edge. It wasn’t clear if she knew how to swim. Either way, she didn’t look afraid of water in the slightest.

Pam sighed, pulled out her latest crossword and listened to the sound of ocean waves. Up the beach, some children were playing a game of volleyball. It was noisy, but somehow comforting. Pam released a tight breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. There were no robots here at all. Most of them didn’t enjoy sand in their joints.

“Grandma! It’s a crab!”

Pam looked up. Nanako was dripping soggy all over the hot sand, with fogged-up goggles and a wide grin. She was holding out a big brown and green crab by the back of its shell. Its eight chitinous legs flexed uselessly in the hot air, two big pincers snipping. It stared at Pam with its tiny glass-bead eyes.

“Don’t torment the poor thing,” Pam said, carefully. “You’re like a giant to it.”

Nanako’s face fell a little. “Oh. Sorry, Mr. Crab.” she said. Then she put it down on the sand. It scuttled unhappily. “Wait… sorry again.”

She looked remorseful as she scooped it up and ran back down to the water to put the dirty thing back in its habitat. When she came back, she wrung out her hair and swapped her goggles for a pair of magenta-rimmed sunglasses. She sat down under the shady umbrella. “Can I have a juice?” she asked. When she got a juice box out of the insulated bag, she stabbed the tab at the top with the straw and slurped it pensively.

“Do you like volleyball?” Pam asked.

“I dunno,” said Nana. “Never played it.”

“I’m sure you’d be good at it,” said Pam. “I see a game going on right up over there.”

A couple of young children clambered past, spraying her with sand. Pam shook the grains out of the fold in her magazine. When she looked up, Nana was already gone, running to the trash can to toss out her empty juice box. Then straight to the volleyball net up the beach.

Pam turned the page and pulled a wine cooler out of the insulated bag. It was just as well George was taking a few holes of golf. A little peace was like a touch-off the midway mark of summer. She picked up her pen from the sandy blanket and stated on this week’s puzzle. (04 Across: Unseen when beggars die?) The tide receded. And so did some level of worry.

It felt too-soon when Nana returned, but it had to have been over an hour. “What’s going on, Nana?”

“Um, they told me I couldn’t play anymore. Teams aren’t even,” she said, but looked like she didn’t really believe that. “I’m gonna make a sandcastle instead.”

“Have fun, sweetie,” Pam said. The puzzle theme was tragic literature quotations this week and each line was hard-pieced from the few references she knew. Soon it would be time to write a letter to the editor. Between archaic science figures two weeks ago and Earth-studies obscurities only last week, there had to be some new editor to blame. It was _New Life_ magazine, not some wastebin for historians-only trivia.

Nana began by getting the big plastic shovel they’d got at the toy store earlier in the day and digging a huge trench in the sand, facing the water.

“What’s that?”

“I’m making it flat,” she said, tamping down the sand she’d taken from the beach. She did have a shelf sticking out of the sloping beach. It wasn’t quite level.

Pam turned back to her puzzle, struggling with something that may or may not have been from Macbeth. Over the top of the page, Nana was taking big buckets of sand and mounding them into a hill. Or some kind of kids’ try at a castle tower. She took rocks from the ground and pressed them into the side in a spiral shape, like windows. At the top she stuck a little shell. That was the flag for it, maybe.

Then she began digging more trenches and making a large wall around the whole thing.

“That’s a very secure sand castle, Nana,” Pam commented off-handedly. She bit her pen cap and finished her second wine cooler. The sun was beginning to sink out the top of the sky. She had to re-angle the umbrella again.

“Uh-huh. I mean isn't that what a castle is? If you can get in it’s not a good castle,” she said.

“Couldn’t you just fly over the wall in a shuttle?”

Nana smacked her little fist in her palm. “Oh! That’s right. I guess it needs turrets or something.”

She mounded more little towers at the junction of each wall, with small driftwood twigs sticking out of them. The afternoon pulled on the sky, until the tide began to creep towards the blanket again. From the gristly business of ‘turrets’ Nana moved on to stringing seaweed from the top of each tower to the big one. She decorated all the walls with tiny pebble crenelations and added more smaller buildings inside the keep. She made these out of sand excavated from a deep moat. A few children sat down to watch her after a while.

She was happy to talk to those kids. But they didn’t stay for long, or try to join in. Pam gave up on her magazine and watched the waves in the background. Nanako was calm, accepting that they’d abandon her even after being asked if they wanted to help. Pam wondered if that was really true. Bad seeds aside, her granddaughter was nothing but friendly and _ordinary_ to children her own age. She’d seen it now. But they still didn’t stay. Why?

Could they _tell?_

“Nana, it’s getting late,” Pam said. “I think that sandcastle is big enough. How about we get home and wash up? We’ll meet Grandpa for supper at the marina club.”

“OK,” she said. The surf was getting to within feet of the sand castle. Soon it would wash away. She splashed in the foam for a second before declaring. “You’re gonna get all wrecked. It’s the water, or,”

She ran right into it, crushing the wall and toppling the elaborate tower with one swift kick.

“Attack of the giant girl!”

The shelf she’d built collapsed and the sand castle fell into the lapping waves. Nanako cackled.

 

Water shapes its course according to the nature of the ground over which it flows; the soldier works out his victory in relation to the foe whom he is facing.  
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War


	12. Lesson Eleven

George was halfway around the house with a tub of weed killer when he passed his granddaughter on the molded concrete walkway. She was running with her little footfalls on the faux cobbles. She had a large canister pressed to her chest, hugged in both arms. George thought nothing of this until he returned to the shed to find the kerosene missing.

He yelped and jogged around the corner until he saw Nanako pouring it over something in the corner of the lawn.

“Hey! Hey, no!”

He ran up as fast as his bad leg would let him and snatched the can away from his granddaughter, wheezing. She didn’t run or try to stop him, just looked up from where she was crouching with wide, spooked eyes. She held a lighter with _Neotopia Cruiseliner_ on the side.

“Nana, what do you think you’re doing?” he gasped, twisting the cap back onto the can. “Give me that! Who told you it was okay to play with fire?”

“Nobody,” Nana admitted, ashamed. “But he deserves a warrior’s funeral!”

George took the lighter from her, incredulous. “ _What?_ ”

She pointed. At her feet was the mummified corpse of a squirrel. It had to have perished over a month ago. Its ugly skull was sticking out from its skinned face, and its rib cage had long caved in.

“I found it under the porch. It was really sad,” Nana said. “Auntie Rombra said that—”

“Nana, there are some things you shouldn’t play with,” George said. He kicked the dead thing into the woods.

 

In order to carry out an attack, we must have means available. The material for raising fire should always be kept in readiness.  
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War


	13. Lesson Twelve

Time approached like a meandering firefly. Dimly winking out. Pam found herself racing it to the end. Not only enduring but rushing, now. Everything she could do, before that time, came to her as an endless list and an effusive blank. Halted by its bumbling pace.

Her granddaughter, thankfully, came up with her own timetable when left alone. Summer sun turned to summer rain, and even she wouldn’t stomp in puddles the whole day. Thank goodness she thought mud was ‘filthy.’ Pam expected her to sit on the living-room couch with her handheld or re-runs of that cartoon she scrutinized for every last detail. Instead, she perched at the edge of her chair at the kitchen table, scribbling furiously on some wide-rule paper.

Pam was wiping down the kitchen counters. “What’s that?”

She made a small noise. The question had surprised her? She was concentrating intently for an 8-year-old. “I had summer reading,” she said.

“Do you need help?”

“I’m a good reader,” Nana said. “I got an essay…”

Really? They made third graders write essays now? They barely knew how to spell! That was another phone call to Keiko. Teacher or not, there was just nothing in forcing children to study rather than play.

Nana must have caught on. “It’s simple. It’s not a long thing. I just have to say what I like about the book, and what I didn’t.”

“What book?”

Nanako pulled out a library copy of _Matilda_ by Roald Dahl out of her lap where she had it open to check a page. It was a real chapter book. And nothing recent, an _old_ chapter book from colonist archives. It was written hundreds of years ago on Earth.

“That looks a little hard for you, sweetie.”

Nana blew that off. Of course she would. “Nah. I got to pick it myself!”

The latch on the dish washer released. Pam bent down to open it, releasing a cloud of white steam. She began drying the dishes, rather than letting them sit.

“What did you think of it?” she asked. Nanako had turned eight less than two months ago. She should have been given a nice picture book.

“I liked it! It was unrealistic and unfair though.”

Pam almost didn’t want to ask, “What do you mean?”

“Some things were weird,” she said, scribbling her ‘essay’ on the paper. “Nice people aren’t named nice names, and mean people don’t get named mean names. Why didn’t anybody notice that Ms. Trunchbull was so evil? The kids she treated bad had parents. What was up with her anyway?”

“I don’t know,” Pam said, never having read the book. She’d been cleaning the same dish for about a minute. She swapped it for the next one.

“If everybody was just so incompetent it makes sense that Matilda had to punish Ms. Trunchbull because nobody else would. But why did she have to lose her telekinesis powers? They go away because she gets to use her brain to do harder school work? That doesn’t make sense. That’s not part of the happy ending. That’s just making everything ordinary again for no reason.”

She pressed a period at the end of the paper. Pam didn’t look closely enough to see if it was legible or not. That was her daughter-in-law’s problem.

“Did you finish?”

“Yeah. But I dunno if it’s good,” she said. Then she mumbled. “You don’t stop being able to write when you go up a grade. Why would telekinesis powers be different?”

“Some people just want to live happily ever after,” said Pam. “They don’t need special magic to be happy.”

“But it wouldn’t make them sad,” said Nana. “Do you think if I went up an extra grade, I’d stop being able to write double?”

Pam squinted. “Write… double?”

“Yeah! I can write with both hands! You know how my brother is good with building things? It’s my special talent!”

“Show me,” Pam said.

Nanako got two extra sheets of paper and picked up her pencil again. Then she took a second one from her pencil case. She held that one in her left hand. Bracing each page with her forearm, she began to doodle in the corners. Then she slowly wrote her name on both sheets at once. The left one was mirrored. The letters were equally lopsided.

“That’s… that’s amazing, Nana,” Pam said.

“Oh, that’s easy.”

She wrote her name again with both hands at once. This time the two copies read in the correct direction. Then she moved down a line and wrote “Nanako” with her left hand, and “Casval Ray” with her right in unison. She punctuated her first name with a star. And she punctuated her middle and last name with a heart. She looked up from her paper at her grandmother, who had forgotten to put away the plate in her hands.

“I can pat my head and rub my tummy too. People say it’s supposed to be hard but it’s not.”

She was still writing, without looking. With both hands. While speaking. The right paper said, “telekinesis would still,” and the left paper said, “be really cool though.” Pam didn’t have to turn her head because Nanako had written it upside-down so someone across the table could read it.

“Good spelling,” Pam said weakly.

 

The general is skillful in attack whose opponent does not know what to defend; and he is skillful in defense whose opponent does not know what to attack.  
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War


	14. Lesson Thirteen

“So these are the same cookies?”

Pam felt her face stretch wide. She spoke through her warm grin of pride. “Oh yes. I believe I gave your mother the recipe as a wedding present. But I’ve been making them for over forty years.”

The statement wasn’t particularly helped by the jar of molasses in her hands. The lid was wedged firmly on and sticky. She wrestled with it in two hands, then ran it under hot water for a few seconds. Then attempted again with a towel, but without luck.

The doorbell rang.

“Can I try?”

“Sure, sweetie.” She handed Nana the stuck jar, wiped her hands on the kitchen towel, and walked towards her front hall. She stopped in the foyer. Ignore it, instinct snarled. The bell rang again, more insistent this time. Pam reached out to the knob and pulled the door in.

A massive red torso filled the space. Pam slammed the door, a live wire up her spine. Her stomach fell down as something within her accelerated. The robot’s metal hand wedged itself in the crack at the last second. Pam did not even try to force it closed. He pushed the way open effortlessly.

Pam stared up at Commander Sazabi. The urge to run was incredible. Instead, she spread herself as wide in the door as she could.

He laughed at her.

“And what is _that_ supposed to accomplish?”

Pam stammered out, “What do _you_ want?”

“What _I_ want is none of your business,” said Sazabi. “But I will _take_ a few hundred grams of white sugar.”

“Sazabi! Hi!”

Nana was trying to shove past Pam’s spread legs. Her face peeked out around her grandmother’s hips.

Sazabi looked down past his own hulking frame. “Nana. Take care of your own task,” he said. It was impossible to knock her granddaughter’s name out of the _devil_ ’s mouth. His one glaring eye lit softly as he spoke it. Hypnotically. There was no fondness in his voice, no kindness. It was broken-glass hideous.

“Okay,” she said, and scampered back into the house.

It was more obedience than the girl had ever shown her. Immediate, even cheerful. Pam sneered. “Get off of my property.”

“Or what?”

“I’m calling the authorities,” Pam whimpered.

“I _am_ the authorities,” Sazabi said. With a cruel, hard pleasure.

He could kill her right here. He was half a ton of guns and not an ounce of humanity. Why had the SDG scraped _him_ off the ground? Why would they put their badge on _this_? There hadn’t been a single _incident_ in a decade, true… but…

“Maybe that was a mistake,” Pam said before she could stop herself.

Sazabi ignored her. “I am not _here_ in official capacity. How lucky for you,” he said. “You won’t even _lend_ your _neighbor_ a cup of sugar?”

“You need to leave.”

Pam was horrified to hear Nana’s little voice from the upstairs window. “Sazabi! Here you go!”

His hand shot out. One of the small extra bags of sugar from the pantry neatly landed in it. Pam hooked her head outside her door, loathing to approach any closer to the huge Axian. The upstairs window was open and her granddaughter was leaning out of it, waving.

“Well. I _was_ leaving,” said Sazabi. He cleared her entire front stairs with only one step. “Your home does not interest me, now that I have some _cooperation_.”

He stepped back only far enough onto the path for his rocket thrusters not to sear her front lawn. They were loud. He did not wave, but did gesture in some way to Nana. She screamed like he was a rock star.

Pam watched him recede into the sky. Farther and farther away. Until he was gone and she was leaning against her doorframe, heart pounding. She wiped the sweat from between her eyes and shut the latch at last. And locked it again.

She took three deep breaths and walked back into the kitchen. Nana was already there, eagerly on the step-stool by the bowl of unfinished cookie batter.

“Got it,” she beamed. She held out an open jar of molasses.

-o-

“Here is your worthless sugar,” Sazabi said. Keiko took the immaculately delivered bag from his hard metal grasp. His rocket thrusters spread him so large that he barely fit in the living room. The house had been renovated twice to give him more clearance.

“I only needed a cup, Sazabi,” said Keiko. He maneuvered into the kitchen.

The robot tilted his head and said with a note of disgust, “Do you expect me to fly at a respectable pace carrying an open _cup_ of _anything_?”

“Hm. I guess you’re right. No sense in frosting yourself if it spills,” Keiko said. She opened the bag carefully, and with a measuring cup poured a cup of sugar into her batch of banana bread. “I hope the _neighbors_ didn’t give you any trouble?”

Sazabi ventilated in derision. In candid satisfaction, too.

“No,” he said. “They hoard it for themselves _._ ”

 

On open ground, do not try to block the enemy's way. On the ground of intersecting highways, join hands with your allies.  
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War


	15. Lesson Fourteen

“Have you seen Nana, dear?”

George looked up from his tablet where he was fiddling with an application. “Not since lunch,” he said. “I thought she was upstairs.

The last week of July was here and as the heat intensified all energy wrung out of the air. The birds went silent in the languid season. The insects were all that made up the difference. Lazy afternoons passed quietly, sometimes so much that Pam did not see Nana save at mealtimes.

There were a few days where she even was thankful for that.

“I thought she was outside,” Pam said. “But I just came in.”

“Well, go check in her room. She might be holed up in there.”

Pam walked up the pile-carpeted stairs, rounded the corner hall, and knocked on the end room door. It was silent within: no sound of cartoons or any creaks of a little girl rolling around on the mattress. Inside the sheets were changed, the bed made, and all the clothes folded, drawers empty, and the suitcase open on the floor. Several of Nanako’s toys were missing.

Pam turned on her heel and ran back downstairs. She checked every room, even the basement.

“George,” Pam said. “Call the police.”

Her husband tapped a couple times on his tablet. Then he understood. His eyes cleared his too-short reading glasses. “Daughter-in-law.”

Shute and Captain Gundam were definitely in another dimension doing whatever unsafe nonsense that they did. So the woman would not be as well-connected without them. But George was right. If she altered the police that she’d lost Nanako, Keiko would know before anyone else. Somehow.

“George, start up the car,” Pam demanded.

-o-

Having left a little more than two hours ago, traveling at a rate a little over five kilometers an hour, Nanako was about 10 kilometers out from her grandmother’s house. Walking backward along the same highway her mother had driven on the way there. She had her small backpack with most of the items she cared about. Other than her extra clothes. Her red dinosaur toy stuck its toothy head out the big pocket.

The cars whipped past her in the other direction. Her hair flew into her face and back in the wind.

They moved to the next lane over when Commander Sazabi touched down on the concrete only a few meters ahead. The girl didn’t look up. She focused on walking, one foot before the other.

“Where do you think _you’re_ going?” he said.

“Home,” Nanako replied. She tried to walk past him.

“No. You’re not,” he said. He plucked her from the ground by the back of her shirt. She didn’t try to fight, but dangled midair unhappily, twisted around to look at him.

“Don’t I come home in a few days?” she pouted. “Does it matter?”

A car screeched as it swerved wide around them. Sazabi looked after it in distaste. Then he tossed her lightly in one hand to reverse his hold on her. She sat in the crook of his arm as he took flight, protected from the focused heat of his rockets. She leaned into him.

He did not fly in the direction she’d came. He pulled away from the ground and soared over the forest between the outer-ring highway and the furthest residential zone. Nana closed her eyes and felt the wind on her face. Listened to the roar of his thrusters. They were efficient. They did not waste energy on enough noise to hurt her ears.

They descended. Nana yelped when Sazabi dropped her precisely on a fallen log. It was in the middle of a windfall clearing, where a big pine had taken down most of its neighbors. He peered down at her from his towering height. Where Nana sat she could see the whole of his round optic.

“This should be _nothing_ to you,” Sazabi said.

Nanako looked at her shoes. Then she sighed a young girl’s sigh and gazed up at him, and spoke plainly for the first time in a month.

“I’m tired of being there. My grandparents don’t like me. It would be better if I just left.”

Sazabi didn’t say anything to her back. He just looked at her. She grumbled.

“That’s dumb,” she said. “I know a lot of people don’t like you. But you stay anyway.”

“Very good,” Sazabi said. “I don’t have to _explain_ your error.”

Nana curled her legs up and rested her chin on her knees. She hugged tight and just sat there for a few seconds. Then she said. “Maybe I’m doing things wrong.”

“What?”

“I’m sick of it,” she mumbled for a second. “I’m sick of pretending I don’t know what they think. I thought if i just was extra nice to them...”

“You shouldn’t shrink before your lessers,” Sazabi said with distaste.

“Not like that! Its… Diplomassey.”

“Diplomacy,” Sazabi corrected.

“Yeah!”

“But you have failed,” said Sazabi.

Nanako sat still in the afternoon sunshine for quite some time. Over five still minutes, she didn’t answer. She sniffed, but did not cry.

“Sazabi?”

“What is it?”

“I think they want a different granddaughter,” she said quietly. “And I don’t know how to fix that.”

“So you retreat?” Sazabi asked her. “When at an impasse, you decide to quit the field?”

Nanako bit her lip. She wanted to shake her head ‘no’ or argue. But that was exactly what had happened, wasn’t it? If she couldn’t do anything, why even bother being there? She bowed her head, ashamed.

But was surprised when Sazabi said to her, “not always a _poor_ choice.”

She looked up. He leaned closer over her, extremely terrible at signalling some form of comfort. Nana placed one hand on his left vambrace. His voice was as choleric as ever, though. “It is worthless to commit oneself to an ineffective tactic. Instead, withdraw and re-evaluate priorities. I do not know, or honestly care what you hope to accomplish with those _fools_. But it is not possible to match them in pettiness. It is not an attractive skillset to cultivate, and they are already the epitome.”

“Like… nobody should bother to try and be faster or stronger than you,” Nana said, “because you’re already the fastest and strongest and even if they tried for a zillion years they’d never be you.”

“Yes. But that does not mean I am insurmountable,” Sazabi said. “Even if I _nearly_ am.”

Nana giggled, but she knew better than to comment. It was rare that Sazabi ever admitted what everybody knew: that he’d been defeated before. He was being totally serious, realistic about himself. Which meant a lot to Nana.

“So you’ll take me home?”

“No,” Sazabi said sharply.

When Nana drooped, he continued. “There is a difference between an organized _retreat_ and a _rout_. If victory isn’t possible as intended, you may regroup to seize another objective. But a _rout_ forfeits _everything_. And I doubt that your _‘grandmother’_ has laid _total_ waste to the situation.”

“You’re right,” Nana said. “I can’t give up. Even if… I can’t really get what I want.”

“Feh. Probably wasn’t important anyway,” Sazabi said. Then, more gravely, “Nana. Whatever you achieve instead won’t be advantageous to either of you.”

“Huh?”

Sazabi picked her from the stump, less harshly this time. Nanako could feel his vocalizer through his armor, his spite was so vicious. “Beings like _your relatives_ will deny any loss so long as they keep breathing. It is not real to them; they are above consequences unless inflicted by force. These pests would prefer mutual destruction to any admission of defeat. They will dispute your advantage and sour any headway you make until they no longer can.”

He chuckled meanly, but there was nothing in it but a show for her. “I find _death_ ends their squabbling.”

“Whatever, weirdo,” Nana giggled. “But… if it’s a big waste of time, why am I even going back?”

“Experience.” He held her tightly. “The futility of what impudent bugs such as _Pam_ think.”

 

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.  
If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.   
If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.  
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War


	16. Lesson Fifteen

After an hour of George driving her around every road in the district, Pam came home to find her granddaughter just _sitting_ there on the front stoop. Hugging that toy of hers. She smiled wider than ever when asked _where_ she’d gone.

“A walk,” she said happily.

Pam asked her why she’d do something like that.

“I wanted to,” she explained.

Pam had to grapple with what she _really_ meant, which was why she’d go off by herself without telling an adult.

“I wasn’t alone,” Nanako said. “I had company.”

She held up that red stuffed dinosaur. Its worn-bare teeth and chipped little eyes menaced her. Nana was having one over her now. She knew very well that a stuffed animal wasn’t a person and the grin on her face couldn’t be anything but shit-eating. It looked exactly like half a dozen grins Pam had thought dear before.

She quickly dismissed the whole incident as having left to go shopping, which George had managed to do on the way home. (by God, supper would still be on the table by six.) Nana abandoned her backpack by the door to go help her grandfather peel corn-on-the-cob.

Pam stood in the door’s shadow and watched them go. The kid was too happy. She’d gone to go _do something_.

She went through her granddaughter’s bag. Why would she take everything out of the drawers and pack her suitcase? Why bring extra clothes for a _walk?_ Or her toys, her handheld, her _summer reading ‘essay_ ’ and borrowed library books?

If she was lying now, there was the possibility that Nanako had been lying about things the entire time. She wasn’t some airheaded savant with a mother who wouldn’t keep her away from the wrong crowd. She was a willing, clever accomplice. Pam had seen it.

She’d tried to _run away_ and then for whatever reason returned. Happy. In a way only one thing, one _damned thing_ seemed to make her. Could it have been anything else?

Pam seized the red plush toy and squeezed its polyester neck. Its head lolled back in an exaggerated roar. She trudged upstairs and to her bedroom. She opened the top cabinet in the attached bathroom and removed the extra-plush towels. She shoved the thing in the back and walled it in. If Nana somehow found it in the trash, that just wouldn’t do. There’d be plenty of time for scissors and a dumpster after the girl was on her way home.

-o-

The girl was frighteningly quick to detect something was off. As soon as she came in from the deck with cornsilk stuck to her wavy yellow hair she made a straight line to her bag. She carried it upstairs. Pam was watching her. She retraced her steps since her return.

“Grandma? I can’t find Zabi,” she said. “Have you seen him?”

“Not since this afternoon,” Pam said smoothly. She picked the mess out of her granddaughter’s hair, tucked a lock behind her ear. “Go get clean for supper, sweetie. Oh, where did you walk that got you all dirty?”

And because she was a fastidious child that liked bathtime and brushing her teeth twice a day, Nana agreed and ran up to her room to wash up. All Pam had to do was distract her for another day and a half, and she’d forget all about that _thing_.

After dinner, George suggested they all see a movie. What a wonderful idea. There was that new animated film about space explorers.

“Grandma, I think I lost my dinosaur,” Nana said in the car. Pam wasn’t fooled. She may have been worried, but she wasn’t upset. She was trying to get her way again.

“Nana, we can buy you a new toy tomorrow,” Pam promised. “I’m sure your dinosaur will turn up anyway.”

The movie was touching and unexpectedly sad at the end. But most important, it was long. By the time it was over, it was late at night and there wasn’t anything to do but go straight to bed when they returned. Grandma was fun, let you stay up past your bedtime. Nana still decided to have her dessert though, even though Pam frowned. She had a glass of hot chocolate milk instead of a cookie.

“Are you going to be able to sleep without your toy?” Pam asked her sensitively.

Nanako slurped in stocking feet on the kitchen floor. She turned around with a big milk mustache. “It’s okay, I found him,” she said. “Please don’t worry about me.”

“Really? That’s,” Pam paused. She felt her heart pound against her ears. “That’s great, sweetie. Turn off the light on your way up, all right?”

“All right.”

Pam closed the article she was reading and strode on her heel up the stairs. She went up to her bedroom and threw open the bathroom door. The top cabinet was undisturbed. Still, she began digging back. There _it_ was. Still entombed in towels.

She packed it back up again and let George in to brush his teeth. Downstairs, the kitchen light was off. Nanako had gone to bed. Pam slipped beneath her quilt and decompressed. Of course the child was embarrassed about asking where her toy was. She never let on that there was anything wrong. She never said it, she never _thought_ it. But it was time she understood what that was like.

 

If asked how to cope with a great host of the enemy in orderly array and on the point of marching to the attack, I should say: "Begin by seizing something which your opponent holds dear; then he will be amenable to your will."   
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War


	17. Final Lesson

She checked on _the thing_ right away in the morning. Then Pam took her own shower, blow-dried her grey hair, got dressed, did her makeup, and began heating waffles for breakfast.

Nanako came downstairs rumpled and worried-looking. She swam in the oversize Dyna Robo! T-shirt she used as pajamas.

“Feeling all right?” Pam asked. She held out a plate of two waffles, with strawberry syrup.

“Yeah,” her granddaughter lied. But she ate her breakfast enthusiastically. George kissed Pam goodbye on his way to work.

“Well, don’t be too sad on your last day. I know you have to go back to school later. I have lots of fun planned,” Pam said. And she really did.

All of it was designed to get her out of the house. Nana was able to watch a few episodes of Dyna Robo! before they freshened up to go visit the botanical gardens on the south side of the city. Their summer flower show was spectacular. She took such a lovely photo of her granddaughter and the daisies.

(She had a bouquet sent to the house.)

They took lunch at a little cafe by the boardwalk. The rides were open for the summer. She rode the moon swing, watched as Nana went around and around on the small roller coaster (“relaxing,” she said!) But by far they spent the most time at the arcade. Pam didn’t care for it. But it was worth it to see her granddaughter try out all the old-style games in turn. And a relief to see she didn’t favor the violent ones with the laser-pointer guns on cords.

Pam did have to make her leave when she discovered how easy it was to exploit skee-ball, though. Nana didn’t show much interest in buying toys with her tickets. She changed them for credit for her handheld’s online store.

When they returned home, George was already there with takeout: Nana’s favorite, barbeque. She ate her sandwich happily, talking about all the games she played and won earlier in the day. The girl loved to talk about winning things.

George had a game of cards with his friends from the club in the evening, and left shortly after dinner. After some obligatory tv-watching, Pam couldn’t stand anymore and rummaged in the back of her closet for some of Markus’ cast-off board games. She returned with a copy of _Scrabble_ and the old checkerboard to find Nanako already sitting at the kitchen table. The console was off, her hands were folded. By her side was that beat-up stuffed dinosaur.

Pam put the games down. Her fingers didn’t feel like they could grasp anything. “You found it,” she said weakly.

“Yeah,” Nanako said.

The sun was going down. The light was pouring in golden through her kitchen, catching her granddaughter’s hair brilliantly. Both of them pitched a long, deep black shadows on the floor. The girl was looking up at her, and did not squint.

“Can we talk?” she asked.

Pam couldn’t say ‘no.’ That was the most hideous part. What would it have been like if she said ‘no?’ So she instead said, “Sure, sweetie,” and sat down on the other end of the table.

Nana was sitting on two thick books to be level with her on the chair. Pam didn’t know what this reminded her of. She didn’t know what was happening. This was strange. And _wrong_. And—

“I want to ask you first off,” Nana said calmly. “Why’d you do it?”

It was clear what ‘it’ she was talking about. “Well— I… I just wanted to… keep it for a while, so we could have…”

“Do you think I’m an _idiot?”_

Her small voice was all steel-needles. Pam had been looking at her hands like a _schoolgirl_ , rose to find that child not smiling or frowning but just _looking_ with her perfect blue eyes. Her pretty blue eyes, just like her father’s.

“That’s rude, Nanako,” she scolded.

“Taking and hiding my things is rude. Lying about it’s rude.” She was completely unyielding. “Pretending to be nice to me all day is rude.”

All day? She’d known all day? How had she had the time to look for the thing, anyway?

“How did y… ?”

“You showed me,” Nanako interrupted. “Last night. I just had to make you afraid I found your hiding place.”

Her mouth turned downward so slightly. Golden evening plunged into washed red.

“It’s easy, because you’re always so afraid of me,” she said.

“Nana, I’m not _afraid_ of you,” Pam said. “Don’t say such silly things. You’re overreacting. What would your father say if he saw you talking back like this?”

Nana shook her head, but did not break eye contact. “Dunno. But that’s changing the subject. Grandma, please take this seriously. My feelings are really hurt. Mom said that—”

“I don’t _care_ what your mother said,” Pam blurted out. “You have no right to talk to me this way!”

“Mom said that adults talk out their problems instead of fighting,” Nana finished.

“You are _not_ an adult! You’re a child! And you need to act like one!” Pam braced both hands on the table. “Instead of whatever… _this_ is!”

But that child just tilted her head. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand. It was a weapon. She was making Pam out to be _incomprehensible_. “I am a child, so I am acting like one. I think I’m just not the child _you_ want.”

“Stop it! You’re _eight years old!_ I’m not going to be the villain here!”

“So you’re saying that you see an eight-year-old as the villain.”

“No!” Pam stood out of her chair. “This has to stop. It’s not right-- it’s not _natural_ , it’s…”

It was worse and worse every second that this child didn’t flinch backward. Apologize for the fuss. Anything!

“Are you done?” the girl asked.

It was then that she saw _it_. In Nanako. In the way she looked at her. Her eye contact unflinching in the bleeding light. She hadn’t blinked yet. Not once. She barely ever did. That gaze had an evil fire behind it. Ruthless and calculating. Dominating.

From the very moment she sat down, Nanako had been in control. There was nothing Pam could do. This was a beating. To cause shame. To demand submission. Pam could see what was staring out from her from its cold titanium shell. The medium of her pretty face, and her eyes were only a _vacuum_.

She could see how _this_ could have tortured that boy.

Her hand shot out, then shaking, could not strike her granddaughter. She brought it in a fist down on the oak table. The board games rattled around.

“This is _his_ fault! _He_ did this to you.” Pam felt hot tears leaking through her eyes at the hollowed-out girl across the table.

That seemed to change her tune. Of course it did. She wasn’t as smart as she thought she was.

“Do you mean Sazabi? Is he what’s… wrong?”

Pam sobbed through laughter, yelled through both. “You’re barely even human!”

Nanako finally looked away. She stared at her grandmother’s fist. A tremor ran through her _unnatural_ composure. She gripped her little hands tightly together.

“It’s okay,” she said.

“ _You_ don’t get to _decide_ that!”

“You don’t have to like Sazabi,” Nanako said. Her words were fogged and muggy. “He wasn’t always a good person. He’s told me things. If you hate him… okay.”

“Nana, you are a _child._ He is a _murderer_!”

“He’s my _friend_ ,” said Nanako, tears leaking openly from her eyes. She was shivering.

“ _He is not your friend!”_ her grandmother yelled.

“Yes he is!” Nanako said. She had to raise her voice now to respond. “You don’t even know him!”

“I know _all_ about him!” Flecks of spit misted the table. “His _invasion_ killed a hundred people! _Violated_ half a million more! And they _forgave_ him for it, and you _almost died!_ Nanako, he _almost killed you!”_

Nanako sniffed quietly. She wouldn’t look at her anymore.

“ _Everything_ has turned out _just_ _golden_ for him! He’s _above_ justice, he’s _armed_ , he’s _gathering his army_. If that Gundam apprehended him, if they stripped him of his power, he’s _taken it back!_ It’s _so convenient_ for him that Haro _handed_ him _everything_ he could _ever want!_ ”

Nanako leaned forward and stared at her lap. Then when she lifted her head she met Pam with that _same stare_ , untarnished by the tears leaking out. She was gripping the table’s edge so hard her knuckles went pale and her fingernails bit the wood finish. Visibly holding herself back. Resenting her snotty voice. “If he got what he wanted back then,” she said, “You’d be dead, Pam.”

The red sunset was fading and so was the light from that child’s eyes.

“If Chief Haro handed Sazabi everything he could ever want, and everything now is just how he wants... Neotopia is a good place. It’s not a wasteland because your granddaughter isn’t like how _you_ want.”

“Go to bed,” Pam said. She said it automatically, her throat backing out of this altercation _for_ her.

“You still get to go to your boat club, and you still get to wear your stinky perfume. Nothing has changed for you. And nothing is going to.”

“Nanako,” didn’t even sound like a real name anymore to Pam.

“Whether you like it or not, Sazabi’s a good guy! And he’s not even here, I am! Everything you did to me was about _me_ , not him!”

“ _Get out of my kitchen!”_

The house was too small to let the scream echo. But it wedged its way into every crack and filled the room to the ceiling. Nanako’s scowl lingered for a few seconds before she hooked her stuffed dinosaur with her elbow and slid sideways off the chair. She stood in the door, and for a second Pam almost saw her mouth something else.

But she didn’t say it. She walked out the door and up the stairs and didn’t slam the door to the spare bedroom.

Pam pressed her head down to the wooden table and sobbed.

 

In war the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory.  
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War


	18. Knowledge

Nanako sat back in the seat of her father’s car next to her suitcase. She looked at her fingernails and felt the rumble of the pavement, the faint vibration of the unliving engine. Grasping her hands crumpled plastic foil. She had a tight bouquet of white daisies from the flower show with her.

“Nana, how are you back there? Pretty quiet,” her father Mark asked, eyes on the road.

“I’m okay,” Nanako said.

“What did you do at Grandma Pam’s?”

Nanako turned the flowers over. They were still fresh. “You know. Stuff…”

“That bad, huh?”

“It was good,” said Nanako. “No problems. I had fun.”

Outside the window, the summer countryside rolled past. On this outer ring highway, pale yellow stone and badlands could be seen beyond the original colony’s bounds. She’d heard that far away, there were more green spots on the planet just like this one. Whole continents full of forests and deserts. Nature preserves. But no other cities. She wondered what it would be like to travel.

She imagined running alongside the car, and when it stopped, to just keep _going_.

“Well, what did you have fun doing?”

Nana shrugged. “Normal stuff. Played outside. Went to the beach. Saw a movie. Went to the flower show, and the arcade… went to the boat club a lot for dinner.”

Her father didn’t _laugh_ but made that little funny snort that meant that something was funny, but in an impolite way. Nanako reached into the bouquet and bent one of the white daisies forward. She began to pluck its satin petals out, one by one.

Loves-me. Loves-me-not.

“I’m glad you weren’t bored. You finish all your homework?”

Loves-me. Loves-me-not.

“Yeah.”

Loves-me. Loves-me-not.

“You didn’t give my mom too big a headache, did you?”

Loves-me. Loves-me-not.

“Mm-hm,” Nanako said. One last petal remained. Loves-me.

“That’s how it was?” her father said. “Well, a little friendly tiff isn’t the end of the world.”

Nanako took loves-me between her thumb and forefinger and ripped it free. Leaving a bare stem and eye.

“ _Pam_ isn’t my friend,” Nanako said.

She crushed the petal in her fingers.

“She's _never_ going to be my friend.”

The rest of the car ride home was silent, until her father did what Pam didn't. He apologized.

“I’m sorry,” he said. And it was for real. “If you learned a hard lesson.”

They pulled into the driveway of their home. They were only a half-an-hour away from that house. Beyond that big tower. Her grandmother still existed there. Still living. Still thinking… whatever she thought.

“Easy lesson,” Nana said. "Hard going down."

The first thing her father did when she got out of the car was give her a big hug. Then they took her suitcase inside and put the daisies in a cup of water. Even the naked one.

 

Anger may in time change to gladness; vexation may be succeeded by content.  
But a kingdom that has once been destroyed can never come again into being; nor can the dead ever be brought back to life.  
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War


End file.
